Elizabeth Severson
September 21, 2006
EDU 290 T/R
1. Summary of Shades of Gray.
Shades of Gray discusses public performances of videos and the use of teachers
copying characters from books to use in their classrooms. In the first issue a hospital
wanted to broadcast a video assortment to their patient’s rooms and was concerned if this
was considered a public performance. Since the videos were going directly to patient’s
rooms though it is very difficult to say if there was any copyright infringement because
the patients were the only ones seeing the videos, none of the public was involved
because it was in personal rooms. Now if the hospital was using DVD’s instead of
videos it would have a lot stricter laws because congress considers that digital forms
should be more protected.
The second matter dealing with a teacher wanting to copy characters out of a book
to use in her classroom and the reproduction of game boards was also a tough definite yes
or no answer. The author Carrie Russell believed that as long as the copy of the book
characters are not being mass produced and used outside of the classroom that it should
be okay. She also stated that the copyright laws have a special set of rules concerning
educational usage and that if it is for nonprofit purposes then it is acceptable. Yet on the
flip side she said that since illustrations are decidedly original and unique that they may
be thought of as to have even more copyright protection. Concerning game boards
Russell believed that this was copyright infringement because they were probably not for
educational use and that the logos on these games had strict registered trademarks
2. The information from this article that will influence me the most would obviously
be the second section specifically regarding teachers. The first section talking about
videos I could be concerned about if I had a big assembly and wanted to show a video.
But for the most part I would be showing videos for only my specific classroom. Dealing
with the second matter though it really makes me aware on watching exactly how much I
use the copying machine for. I think as a teacher it is just easy to think that since the
material has already been paid for and bought that you can use it as much as you want to
use in your classrooms. The rules on game boards make sense considering they are not
used for educational materials.
3. Article number one, A study on teachers' knowledge about multimedia and
copyright: the problem and some possible answers, was similar to article two called the
Shades of Gray because they both dealt with teachers copyright issues and what exactly a
teacher understood about these rules and what they didn’t. In the first article a study was
done to prove that teachers knew very little about copyright laws, and in the second
article questions were posed by teachers showing that they really didn’t understand the
copyright laws.
4. Shades of Gray is different from, A study on teachers' knowledge about multimedia
and copyright: the problem and some possible answers, because one was basically a study
